Center Stage: Francine Prose

Francine Prose, prolific author of more than 12 books and countless short stories, arrived at Baruch College yesterday evening for a reading of her newest novel, Goldengrove.

Instead of a perfunctory recitation, however, she delighted the audience with her relatively obscure story, “Hansel and Gretel,” written in 1986. Prose flexed her literary muscles in “Hansel and Gretel,” and created a work infused with the popular theme of “the impossibility of anything ever staying the same.” Polly is the narrator, a young woman who loses her hope of a happy marriage during a weekend vacation in Vermont. One is able to relate to the isolation Polly feels, the helplessness that constricts her, and yet, Prose also captures those serendipitous moments of chance when we realize that we are all connected. Almost entirely biographical, “Hansel and Gretel” reflects Prose’s own struggle with realizing the impermanence of things.
It is that inconsistency in life that has rewarded her for her hard work and diligence. It is an accepted notion in our society that to write is to starve and yet, Prose illustrates both in her books and through her own story that success is within our reach. For such a well-established writer however, she is surprisingly down to earth. Her humility stems from her humble beginnings. She announced at one point, “I didn’t even consider myself a real writer even after I had three books published.” She was a “flashlight reader,” not a writer. As she grew older, however, her love for reading blossomed into a passion for the written word. Her history of close reading surely helped hone her skills, and now Reading Like A Writer has transcribed the essential techniques of reading with which Prose is so familiar. When asked why she writes, she claimed that she simply possessed no other marketable talents, and that as a youth her only other feasible profession was babysitting. Obviously, she is not the type of author to place herself on a high pedestal – she makes her assent to literary eminence seem effortless. A skilled writer, a passionate reader, and a kind person, Francine Prose is one of the few people who remind us that our lives can be extraordinary.